After Theory

🌿 From interpretation to structure

We have looked at institutions from many angles.

As rules of the game.
As systems of incentives.
As structures of power.
As frameworks of order.
As products of culture.
As forms of organisation.
As limits of knowledge.
As expressions of political logic.

Each perspective clarifies something.
None explains everything.

Taken together, they suggest a simple insight:
institutions do not fail for a single reason.

They weaken through incentives, through interests, through complexity, through misplaced design, through the erosion of trust, and through limits that cannot be overcome.

Theory sharpens our view.
It does not resolve the problem.

What follows moves away from interpretation.

If institutions decay, then this decay should have structure.
Patterns.
Regularities.

Not a theory of what institutions are—
but of how they weaken.

We turn, therefore, from perspectives to mechanisms.